Stay on target

Let’s be frank: unless you’re some kind of machine, Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to keep you busy for a really long time. Once you finish the storyline — which is epic in its own right — Rockstar cuts you loose to wander the Old West (and East, technically) and do whatever you want for as long as you want. But all good things must come to an end, and eventually you’re going to be well and truly done with the game. But if your thirst for Western adventure isn’t slaked, we’ve got you covered. Here are 11 excellent games that scratch some of the same saddle itches as Red Dead Redemption 2.

Lead And Gold

Judging from Rockstar’s tremendous success with Grand Theft Auto Online, it’s only a matter of time before we get a multiplayer version of RDR 2 to waste time in. Until that day, though, why not pick up 2010’s Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West, an underrated co-op shooter that featured six game modes and four classes, each of which had different weapons. One interesting twist was the “synergy” effect, which provided class-based bonuses for staying in proximity to your teammates. It’s not a terribly imaginative game but it’s polished and still fun if you can find people to play with.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

Ubisoft’s Call of Juarez series had a pretty dire third installment, so the developers corrected course and went back to the Old West for the fourth game, Gunslinger. The player takes the role of bounty hunter Silas Greaves, who regales patrons at a dingy tavern with stories of his most incredible adventures. You play through them in flashback form, and as Silas’s audience challenges the historical accuracy of his retellings, the environment changes around him — a pretty cool way to use the “unreliable narrator” trope in gameplay. The shooting is fast and smooth, with the extra Duel mode letting you test your speed and accuracy in a series of one-on-one showdowns.

Mad Max

While not set in a traditional Old West environment, the 2015 Mad Max game has a lot of similarities. You’re on your own in a vast, open space with lots of stunning vistas and a whole bunch of really dirty people who don’t care whether you live or die. Instead of a horse, you have Max’s trademark heavily modified Ford Falcon XB GT car, which you can soup up with parts and labor as you freely explore the wasteland. It’s not as opaque and narrative-heavy as Red Dead but has a similar feeling of being overwhelmed by the scale of the world around you, plus very satisfyingly gory car combat.

Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist

Let’s dip into the retro bins for this comedic adventure developed by Leisure Suit Larry‘s Al Lowe for Sierra On-Line in 1993. The titular character retired from gunslinging after getting his ear shot off, but when a mysterious developer starts buying up the town of Coarsegold he must get to the bottom of the mystery. The 90s saw Sierra get into richer multimedia, with the characters in the game fully voiced and original opening and closing songs written by Josh Mandel. One interesting tidbit is that Sierra released two distinct versions — the floppy disc release, which omits the voice and songs, has way more jokes crammed into the text and dialogue.

Wild Guns Reloaded

The original Wild Guns came out in 1994 for the Super Nintendo as a third-person shooter in the vein of CABAL, where the player controlled an avatar who could move left and right and shot into the screen aimed at a reticle. The aesthetic was something unique and bizarre, combining over-the-top anime and sci-fi influences with an Old West setting, and it was a whole pile of fun. Natsume brought back the game in 2016 as an enhanced remaster featuring additional stages, enemies, player characters and even four-player co-op. It’s a weird Western but a solid one.

Hunt: Showdown

We’re always a little nervous about recommending Early Access games to you, dear reader, but Hunt: Showdown is stable and fun enough that the risk is worth it. This competitive PVP game with heavy PVE elements casts you as a bounty hunter in the swamps of 1890s Louisiana, paid to take down hideous monsters while you deal with other hunters looking to take the job. It’s a wildly atmospheric first-person shooter that requires you to pay close attention to the environment to survive, from hunting down your quarry to setting up the kill. And once you prevail, the real fun begins: you need to escape the swamp with proof and all the other players are working to stop you. It’s a little more fantastic than RDR but equally atmospheric and cool.

Westerado: Double Barrelled

One of the more interesting things about Red Dead Redemption II is how deliberately primitive the control system is. Life in the Old West was difficult and time-consuming, and if you enjoyed the feeling of having to do everything your damn self, Westerado will bring you that in spades. The retro-looking title manages to do a solid job of simulating a real-feeling world, where the decisions you make and the people you kill on your quest to avenge your family have real consequences. Because the culprit is different each time, you’ll want to replay this one and see just what kind of chaos you can elicit.

Hard West

For a more strategic experience, plug in oddball turn-based tactics game Hard West, developed by CreativeForge Games. Drawing inspiration from the XCom series, the game puts you in control of a squad of gunmen over short campaigns that pit you against both other desperadoes and Satanic entities from the pit of Hell. The game goes heavy on atmosphere, with eerie ghost towns, lonely prairies and abandoned mines hosting your combats. Throw in a clever character-building system that lets you customize your cowboys in a wide variety of ways and you’ve got a solid time sink.

Fallout: New Vegas

You’re probably hype for Fallout 76, but if you want a more Western post-apocalyptic experience, why not take a trip back to New Vegas? Set in the American Southwest after nuclear war, the environment is probably pretty close to the way it was before the Gold Rush, only with more mutants. As the Courier, you need to transport a package across the Mojave to New Vegas, but on the way you get caught up in all sorts of nonsense. It’s got a similar feel to RDR with a massive world full of things to do like gambling and crafting, as well as a reputation system that determines how people interact with you.

12 Is Better Than 6

Most Western games take their visual inspiration from the classic movies of the genre – lots of sun-dappled vistas and mud-brown frontier towns. The developers of recent indie success 12 Is Better Than 6 went in a… different direction. The top-down action will remind you of Hotline Miami, but all the artwork is hand-drawn in black and white for an experience like playing through a kid’s notebook doodles. You play an escaped Mexican slave on the warpath for revenge across a number of innovative, violent missions with satisfying gunplay and an array of weapons.

A Fistful Of Gun

If you’re on the market for something a little shallower, 2015 indie title A Fistful Of Gun might be more your speed. The creation of New Zealand developer Paul Hart, it’s a top-down shooter that features eleven different characters, each with their own individualized control scheme and weaponry. One makes you flick the joystick to shoot, another wields two pistols, each of which is fired with a different button – you get the idea. This might feel gimmicky at first, but it’s a clever way to extend replayability and polish different skillsets. The game is also wickedly hard, with limited lives and no continue feature pushing the old-school arcade comparisons.